


Never Explain

by thegoodgirl



Category: White Oleander (2002)
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:25:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7858024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodgirl/pseuds/thegoodgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I first touch him he's covered in sawdust from the work like a thin veil over his skin. I'm not going to forget this. My mother told me to remember everything.</p><p>Repost of an Astrid/Ray story I wrote for 2009's Porn Battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Explain

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written in June 2009 for [oxoniensis'](http://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis) eighth Porn Battle on Dreamwidth. The prompts were sawdust, shelter and hair. White Oleander is one of my favourite movies/books ever, and this is fic for the film version. 
> 
> Disclaimer: in the film, Astrid is noted as being 16, but the state she's in when she lives with Starr is never specified, hence the underage warning. I don't justify abuse in any way.

When it happens it is in an old house.

I know what to look for after the kitchen. I understand. This is the way it has to go. I find myself seeing him in different ways, hating it. I don't want him to hate me. I don't think I would care if he was mad at me for doing something wrong, as long as he knew I did it because of him. Because of what he's doing to my mind. Believing things is better than knowing things and I believe him. I believe that he wants to protect me from something. I don't know what it is. But he feels like hiding under a warm blanket during a cold storm. Like a band-aid over a fresh cut on your finger after you've sucked out the blood. I'm uncertain what I am to him. I think he believes in me more than he does in God.

When I first touch him he's covered in sawdust from the work like a thin veil over his skin. I like it. My first experience of his hands is that they're not easy like mine. They're rough. I feel my mind losing itself when he touches me. I make it a routine. After the first time it is easier to let myself go. I'm not afraid. He protects me. When I'm ready I let him know. I ride him like a horse in a storm, low and rough through sparks. I can feel his heart beating against my forehead when I put it on his chest. I'm not going to forget this. My mother told me to remember everything.

His kisses feel just like the wind on the rooftop with my mother. A sweetness, a calm. Knowing the sweep of a strand of hair, the color of his skin, the tastes and smells are all I need to survive. I begin to feel as though the rush is all I need. He takes me into arms and touches me in places I never thought possible. I get to explore. I like it. I didn't imagine that this would happen to me. But I'm glad it has.

He lets me know when it's time to go. I follow him and let myself experience it all over again.

* * *

A week later I show him a letter from my mother.

He's lying in bed when I give it to him. I'm lying there too. The sheet is dancing somewhere around my feet. I have to lean out of bed to find the letter inside my bag. The air is cold. It feels better when I'm lying still, when I'm absorbing the heat of his body. I'm not afraid of his reaction. I don't know how to express that being with him makes me feel open. He holds the letter in his hand and feels the weight. One thumb slides under the white stretch of paper, flicking the envelope open from the top. His other hand is around me somewhere, touching light. He reads it out loud.

"Dear Astrid." He holds the cigarette in one hand as he reads it. It's too close to the page. "Have you been gettin' my letters? It's been six months, why the hell don't you write?"

I smile and laugh. "She doesn't say 'hell'. She never says 'hell'."

"Well, maybe she oughta," he smiles. He plants a kiss on the top of my head. I lean into his chest. His heartbeat flutters. Like a hummingbird. "Well-placed 'hell' can get you outta all sorts of trouble. Into it, too."

I let my fingers trail like his does over the edges of my mother's letter. I can imagine her writing it. She used her left hand.

"Keep reading," I tell him. I put my arm over him and try and trace the outline of his heart with my fingers. He takes his arm from my side for another breath of his cigarette. The smoke is like a signal up into the sky. I stare at the wall as he reads. He doesn't make it sound like poetry. He makes it sound sad. I block out his voice after a while, pretend that I can't hear it. I've read it a thousand times. I don't want to know what she sounds like anymore.

"You remembering it all, Astrid?" he asks when he's finished reading. I feel his body move when his arm puts the letter aside. I decide I like it better when it's away from him. I like it when I am the one compelling his attention.

"I think so," I tell him. My voice sounds soft. "I remember this every time it happens."

He looks away when I say that, sends his vision up towards the sky. I wonder if I've done something wrong. I move my hand away from his heart and his chest moves up and down. I am happy he's still breathing. He takes long breaths and closes his eyes like I've asked him a difficult question. I haven't. I've asked him an invisible one instead. An easy one, instead.

"Maybe this is something you shouldn't oughta be remembering." He says it like a warning, a prayer, a question. He is asking me to give it up. I can't find a way to tell him how he makes me feel except for reciprocation. I know it's not enough. Maybe that's all that I am able to show. It's all I'm supposed to remember.

I trace my hand down his body, past where the bed sheet starts. I already know what's there. It doesn't take long. I'm used to the movements and what I have to do in order for it to start. His chest is only just beginning to rise and fall. He surprises me when he rolls over and on top of me, his lips at my throat. His knee rests between my legs and I move so I can use it. He looks down and up like he's surprised. He shouldn't be. He knows that I remember everything.

"Astrid," he breathes out, all the sound coming from deep inside his throat. It's different to when Starr says it, to when my mother used to say it, to when she says it in her letters. It's different to anything I've had before. I run my hands over his body, from his stomach across his heart. He closes his eyes and breathes faster with each inch. I'm not going to stop. Not until he tells me no.

I remember every part of it. Every tick of the clock, every kiss, every glance. I'm not the one who's supposed to feel bad. When he touches me my whole body is on fire and that's what I remember most of all. I think about it sometimes, when he's not there. I can hear him with Starr in the next room. I don't sound like her. I don't sound like anyone. It's different when I'm with him, when I'm the one on top and not Starr. He makes more sounds. I'm not supposed to be the one asking why. I'm almost ashamed that I do. It doesn't matter.

I wonder what my mother would think of me now.

* * *

"Do you ever think about your son?"

I say the lines like they're rehearsed. Maybe I'm the one who's been rehearsing them. There's a bed in some empty house and we are lying in it. It's after. I feel like I could stand for it to happen again. He told me it had been five years. It's been a month since I last saw my mother. I can't imagine it ever being longer. I can't picture the both of us any further away.

"Well," he answers me, "truth be told, she weren't much older than you." He looks at me from where he is and his eyes crawl down my body like a snake. I'm naked underneath the sheets. He knows it. I smile and I don't mind. "Well, maybe a little older." 

My smile turns into a laugh and so does his. He keeps going. 

"Been together a good year and she got pregnant. Bible had her keeping it. And I wasn't much ready to be father any more than she was ready to be a mother."

"How can you be ready to be a mother?" I ask it like I haven't thought of asking it before, of screaming it inside my head. She'd like that. She'd scream it just to get it out. He looks at me with curious expression like I'm a work of art. I'm supposed to call it admiration, though I know I'm not the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. I can't imagine being that to anyone.

"You can't think about yourself when you got a little kid running around." He tells me like a lesson I'm meant to have learned. People talk to me like that. They don't think I'm capable of thinking for myself. The Reverend says it's evil. So is knowing things. The only things I know are about him.

"You've always gotta think about your kid," he continues. His body leans over to drop the ash from the cigarette into the ashtray. "His mother was just...ready to do it more than I was. Ready to battle on through."

I think about what he said to me as I stare at the ceiling. He finishes his cigarette and reaches over to hold a piece of my hair between his fingertips. I like it. He told me he loves my hair. My mother always wanted me to cut it. If you were brave, she said, you'd cut it all off until there was nothing left but what you were born with. She would never cut her own hair. It made her beautiful. She had long hair and she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had battled through until she was there.

When Ray is on top of me my legs are open. I let him go. One of his hands drags across my thigh. When I turn him over the ends of my hair are just long enough to drag across his chest. He likes it. He feels good inside me like a fire burning and  he makes those sounds. I like to hear him. I like his hand dancing in my hair. It's fire burning bridges across a lonely river. He makes me feel I could explode. As though we're all that's left in the world.

When it's finished, when we're over, he can't get his breath back. I remember what he said about Starr. _I guess it's harder getting older, pretty girl coming up in the house_. I remember what he said about his wife and his son. I want him to be able to find them. I want to be able to do what my mother did and battle on through the harsh storm. I wonder if his wife looked like I do now. If that is why he likes my hair.

I'm not wondering anything. I wonder it all at the same time.

* * *

When it happens it is in an old house.

It doesn't take long. I knew that it would happen. I thought when it did I'd be ready for it. I don't think there is one moment where Starr starts to know. I think she knew from the beginning. Maybe she knew before I did. I don't think I was the first. It occurs to me that I'm right but I'm not jealous. I just want him to be mine.

When Starr starts to drink more I tell myself it's not my fault. I'm not the one who put the bottle in her hand. But I didn't put the flower in my mother's hands either. I didn't tell her what to do or how to do it. But she didn't kill him alone. I could have saved his life, my life, and I didn't. It didn't even matter if it was worth saving. It goes against everything my mother taught me. You have to look out only for yourself, she said, you are my daughter and you are perfect. But I'm not perfect enough to be good. I'm not perfect enough for him to tell. I know I'm not the one that made my mother do what she did. It doesn't stop me feeling like I was. And I was the one that put the gun in Starr's hand.

When her voice rises I am listening and I know what's wrong. I tell the kids to go to bed. I've known he's not touching her anymore, not staying near her. The sounds from their bedroom aren't clear. I don't think he wants her anymore. I think he wants me. When Starr yells she mentions him screwing her sponsor. I don't know who she is. It's not me. I'm not scared of what's going to happen any more then I felt scared of my mother. Ray wanted to save me from something. I just didn't know that it was her.

The gun Starr has in her hand doesn't brush through the air until she's in the doorway. I don't know what it is. If she'd fired the gun it would have left a bullet hole in the wall between his bed and my bed. Both of them are mine. He is the one that grabs her, holds her, pulls her arm down so she doesn't do it again. He protects me. I go to Kiralee's window and scrape it open and shove out the glass. It shatters on the ground and I don't know whether to jump and cut myself or wait for him to push me. When a body enters the room behind me I think it's him. I don't wonder why I turned around.

The shot hits me like a poison flowing through my veins. I can feel my body falling. He is the last thing I see. His eyes are the last thing I see. They stay on me as he pulls Starr out of the room. My mother would want me to run before he can come back. She'd like that. She'd make them wait just to see her leave.

I see flowers. Thousands of white flowers with green leaves. I wonder where he is and why he's not coming back. Somewhere far away I hear him yell or cry. The door slams.

I do not see him again.


End file.
